The company was Oceanfast and this was 1986. So the journey into marine design and the specialty of luxury craft began. It was during the construction of their second yacht Sorgiovanni joined the design team and this, the Motor Yacht Parts VI became the flag ship for the Royal Perth Yacht Club's 1987 Defence of the America's Cup. In their original bid to make the big splash, Oceanfast had commissioned Jon Bannenberg, an expatriate Australian (NSW) who had an excellent international reputation for yacht design. This would give an international name and flavour to this new Australian product. Jon, now living in England, was originally a concert pianist and had a penchant for all things wealth attracted and an extreme talent not only to design original concepts, but also convince potential buyers this was what they needed. Jon Bannenberg was exceptional on concept and the local office had the task of interpreting his concepts into working drawings from which the yard could construct. Originally Sorgiovanni was part of the team who produced the working drawings, which were in turn, sent back to Jon Bannenberg for approval prior to construction. As time went on, he developed more and more ability not only to express Jon Bannenberg's concepts, but eventually to create new concepts he was happy with and this lead to projects where Sorgiovanni was chief designer and very little was sent to Bannenberg for approval. The other substantial benefit Sorgiovanni had was that he was working hand in hand with the tradesmen on the floor and was able to produce drawings which could be built without compromise caused by inability to actually fabricate a drawing to the letter. With this knowledge Sorgiovanni was also able to help the tradesmen develop methods to create what he had drawn. He eventually headed up the Oceanfast design office and, a year or so before the company went public, one of their early clients who built Mercedes, came back for another vessel and this, Mercedes II, became his personal project with very little involvement from Jon Bannenberg. Bannenberg was busy working on several new exciting projects, one of which was the 50 metre turbine powered motor yacht Thunder that was started about a year later. Another reason was the client had some pretty fixed ideas about what he wanted, and Jon Bannenberg found this approach a little less interesting. Sorgiovanni worked well with this owner having been involved in his first yacht and so the project was left with him to design and complete. This yacht went on to the Fort Lauderdale Boat show, was a huge success and won the International Superyachts Design Awards for exterior styling and interior design. This was by far Sorgiovanni's greatest achievement at that stage and a series of events led him to leave Oceanfast and start his own design office. When Oceanfast became a public company Jon Bannenberg was a shareholder. This alone was sufficient to make Sorgiovanni restless but a call from an American yacht owner, who was building a new yacht and had seen Mercedes II, was enough for him to make the move. So he set up Sam Sorgiovanni Design and became an independent design house. The first major project was the new Excellence II interior for Herb Chambers, the owner of Excellence I. This new yacht was built by Feadship in Holland, a well recognised yacht builder, and was 155 feet with three decks and an open sun deck. From this beginning SSD went on from strength to strength, designing whilst at Oceanfast Aussie Rules for golfer Greg Norman, and then after establishing the new office, Aussie Rules II again for Greg Norman, built by Oceanfast, now under the ownership of Austal, who had bought the publicly listed Oceanfast. Sorgiovanni has designed many vessels for Warren Yachts in N.S.W. including their 75 to 85 foot Stealth series some of which were Hey Jude, Illusion, Morpheus as well as the 76 foot 118 | ocean DESIGN Sam Sorgiovanni West Australian Designer After six months of freelancing since graduating from Industrial Design at Curtin University, Sam Sorgiovanni received a call from a fellow designer to join a design group involved in marine design and Sam accepted. This new company had been recently formed and was intent on making a big splash in the international arena of luxury motor yachts. BY Rod Tweddle The 174 foot M Y.Sea Bowld The M Y Mercedes II -- main & dining saloon